


Take the Sky, But Leave the Stars

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Meant to Be Epic, Slow Build, Spock POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-04-04
Updated: 2010-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-10 13:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10439016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: Spock's thoughts on his captain, crew, and the five-year mission."And in consideration, decisions are made."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 4/4/10. I stopped writing thing because literally no one read it. Literally no one. It was kind of depressing.
> 
> So, I could probably be convinced to continue. I have the whole damn thing plotted out. Like. All of it. And this was not meant to be short.

Spock had long since grown accustomed to being -- to use a Terran turn of phrase -- above-the-bar. He had always surpassed expectations, set new records, and even uncovered things that those before him had never thought to uncover.  
There was no particular subject in which he excelled, but rather, there was the simple truth that it was _learning_ over which he was master. It came so naturally to him, the process of accumulating data, that the study of something was not his second nature, but his first. Though he had grown up and been raised in a restrictive and understated society, the inquisitive and eager parts of Spock's personality -- so inherent -- had never been truly dulled.

It was due to this nature that, whenever he encountered something that did not immediately fit into the neat, categorical space of his mind, Spock's first and truest instinct was to study it.

And Spock? Was truly, truly good at studying.

When he had first entered group schooling and seen that his human half affected him far more than he had thought, Spock had sought to remedy this through understanding and logical application. He had thoroughly studied the human species and their emotional reactions and affectations in order to flush those from his perceived behavior. His understanding of the species had become, academically, almost flawless, by the time he was struck with a new realization.

His academic understanding, while flawless by means of scientific study, papers, and reading, did not have any practicality to it. In order to fully understand something as psychosocially abstract as emotion, he needed practical research terms as well as literary.

As soon as he worked out the means by which to test his hypothesis, Spock came by the results which he had been desiring.

He also proved, to those who knew of his research, that he possessed equal theoretical and applied intelligence. A feat, which, considering the scale of both, was truly daunting.

There were no subjects or skills that he found himself unable to master once he had thoroughly gained understanding of that mastery and chosen to follow through. Sometimes, he did not choose, which, in his understanding, was an aspect of human nature that he had inherited, fortunate or no. With _age_ had come that particular understanding.

When Spock had chosen to turn down the Vulcan Science Academy and join Starfleet, his studies had helped him to recognize that as another human impulse. He had allowed it because it felt right. That it felt at all might have been a failure, but it had been one that had led to many successes. It was acceptable (rationalizing was another characteristic of humans that Spock was decidedly unfeeling about, which may or may not have been rationalizing itself).

His decision to follow the advice from the Spock of Nero's universe -- the infinite possibilities in infinite combination was possibly less fascinating in person -- had been a combination of both his fundamental desire for the acquisition of new knowledge, and the feeling that he had had that while going to help settle New Vulcan would have been the logical thing to do, for him, it was not the _right_ thing to do. Spock had learned, just as surely as he had learned how to control the exhibition of his human emotions, when the echoes of those emotions could tell him something that logic simply could not.

They told him to rejoin the _Enterprise_ and her crew, and so he did. In a way, it was as logical as any analytical decision he had ever made. 

Logical decision or no, it came as a surprise to Spock, and perhaps to everyone else both aboard and abroad the _Enterprise_ , when the ship had nothing but smooth sailing through its first few missions, regardless of their difficulty level: when the insubordinate, cocksure Captain Kirk showed himself to be precisely that.

A Captain.

Spock had not had much interaction with Jim Kirk when he'd been a cadet, and at the time, he had considered that much for the better. What he had heard through the professorial grapevine had been hardly complimentary. Kirk had been obstinate, outspoken, and he threw 'tried and true' to the wayside. Common opinion had been that, once Kirk had seen how things really worked, he would be given a rude awakening in both attitude and functionality. He would realize that what his teachers were trying to tell him was for his own good, and perhaps regret having not paid more attention.

Now, serving side-by-side with Kirk's out-of-the-box rationality, Spock found himself, illogically, wishing that he had at least observed the cadet once or twice. Wishing that he had at least had the sense to gather his own understanding, rather than simply assuming the general opinion. Kirk's test scores had been off the charts. If Spock was honest with himself, he had, more than once, let a wayward thought question the validity of the absolute dismissal that Kirk seemed to be receiving from the more conservative professors. His own consequent dismissal had been from his political and moral basis of agreement, logical and precise. Truthfully, he should have known better; how often in the past -- in his own experience -- had general opinion, based in such, been formed from something so far from actuality as to be embarrassing? Seeing the practical results of Kirk's thinking -- the near-perfect success rate that Kirk had, even if their expenses on account of damages were already reaching astronomical and record-breaking highs -- Spock knew this to have been the case in the circumstances of his colleagues' opinion of Cadet Kirk. 

He wished he had observed Kirk as a cadet for a second reason, as well. When he had first seen Kirk in the Academy hall, he had thought he had assessed all there was of the brash, shallow cadet. He had kept that opinion past the point of logic and into ridiculousness, he knew, as the situation with Nero had progressed and Kirk had proven himself to be brash, yes, but correct, time and time again. From what Spock had observed of the human race, as a whole, that sort of brashness rarely came with the depth of thought and perception that Kirk possessed. Rarely were humans able to make sound tactical decisions while appearing so overwhelmingly compromised. Kirk's fire -- his sheer _energy_ \-- had appeared as such to Spock: a compromising state of being. He recognized it now for what it was. The overflow of perceptiveness and information that Kirk had at any given time, and that he had only recently begun to enumerate for Spock, would perhaps never cease to amaze. It was no wonder that, with a considerable deal more information now keyed into the equation, Kirk almost seemed to shake with the force of his restrained energy.

Understanding, now, one level to that brashness, logic dictated that Spock take the time to reassess the fundamental variables to the whole of the equation that was Jim Kirk. 

The first step to which was, of course, the determining of those variables in their entirety.

At heart, Spock knew that he was truly a researcher. He knew that the task before him was not one that he would benefit from underestimating; he had underestimated Jim Kirk to his own disappointment in the past, and Spock would not fail to learn from his own mistakes. He would enter the task with the assumption that, to Jim Kirk, there were layers unknown and unseen that would rewrite his understanding completely. Those layers would not be failure: in fact, they would be their own small successes. In the end, only good could come from understanding a captain who could manage such an unprecedented and startling success rate with methods completely unknown. The analysis would benefit both Starfleet and the Federation, and Spock knew the results were sure to be equally as intriguing as the underlying virtue of Kirk's brashness; the captain had yet to disappoint.


End file.
